why do you think it broke???

[OsageBowyer]

Why do you think this bow broke?
 Mabye I am way off...I could use an other opinion or two.
    :rolleyes:    
 

[BigRonHuntAlot]

My guess would be that if it was not overdrawn that there was a pocket in that knot and it caused the failure...  But that is just a guess!

[OsageBowyer]

Thats not a knot the crack is on the belly side at my branded logo.the pic is upside down and showes below just below the handle

[BigRonHuntAlot]

????????????  I don't know... May be the grain was wrong to start with..  Best of Luck To You!

[OsageBowyer]

Thanks much ... any one else???

[Steve B.]

I'm trying to move this to the Bowyer's Bench forum but it won't cut and paste    

[Bob Barnes]

Branded? logo...maybe it got too hot and too dry from the branding?
Bob

[Dano]

That's what I was thinking too Bob, how about pictures of the back at that spot, maybe it was something on the back that caused the belly to fail.

[**DONOTDELETE**]

For Now I agree with Bob.

But I have some ???'s
1) how old is the bow?
2) was it made from a board?
3) is it red oak?

[Steve Kendrot]

Looks like someone bent it the wrong way?! Seems like a crack like that would be rare on the compression side of the wood, unless maybe there was a weak growth ring and the layers "slid" like a tectonic plate. A little mini-earthquake. Scare ya?

I had a BBO blow on me a couple weeks ago, I believe from a faulty glue up.

[Pat B]

I thought it looked like someone bent it the wrong way also. It doesn't look like a compression fracture but like a belly grain lifting.     Pat

[onemississipp]

Looks like the pics are upside down, and I would have to agree that it appears to have been pulled the wrong way. Or we aren't getting to see the whole picture.

I'm surprised when people see a self bow, and say "Cool" pick it up hold it like they are going to shoot it, or course it is unstrung. About 9 times out of ten they have the back facing them and it is upside down.

[OkKeith]

Hey Chris,
I saved your pics and inverted them to take a look.

I have seen this type of blow out before.

Typically on board bows, and on the belly side. My impression is that the wood fiber in that area, for some reason, failed in compression. The reason it looks "blown out" is because as the fibers were pushed together, they had nowhere else to go.

Take both hands palms toward you. Put all your fingers tip to tip and push. The lateral movement is what goes on in the bow. The fibers can not push all the way through the core of the bow so the force pushes them outwards and, VIOLA, a blow out. Your brand could have damaged the fibers or it could have just been a bad spot in the grain.

Like I said, I have seen this several times, particularly with Red Oak bows. There always seems to be a nick, ding or bad spot along the grain (you may have to completely break the bow to do an adequate necropsy).

Red Oak, although a good bow wood, can have some problems that never surface until it is stressed a few times. Again, I see it quite a bit in board bows. The little tubes in the wood that carry the tree's food and water up and down the trunk never fill in like in White Oak or Hickory (thats why ya never see Red Oak whiskey barrels, they would leak). You can get grain runs where the wet season and dry season rings just come apart. The branding may have helped this along.

I would like to see a few more pictures to see where along the bow it happened.

Then again... sometimes bows just break. No whys or wherefors. I have all my busted bows mounted on the wall of my shop. A monument to failure if ya will.

Start another or two. I read somewhere that a selfbowyer who gets one shooter out of three he starts is doing really good.

OkKeith

[Jeremy]

I had a hickory backed cherry and a red oak board bow both blow out the same way on the belly.  The cherry developed crysals shortly before going boom, but the red oak looked gorgeous.  Neither wood is terribly strong in compression.

[Shakes.602]

I dont SEE  :cool:   that it was Backed with Anything, or am I STILL going Blind?  

[OsageBowyer]

Great insight    I don't have the bow and had to figure this out by pics alone...the owner was indignate and down right pissed that I might think he would have strung the bow backwards... It was self backed osage and as it was a short one 48" long.. OKKeith's explanation sounds most probable & I am told it was shot on a daily basis and was alittle more than two months old, I've had many self bows break on me in QC as I treat them pretty rough but never any that looked like this on the belly/compression side    Thank you, Thank you, Thank you All of yall is too cool. many thanks to the best archery forum in cyber land.

[Don Stokes]

Dan Quillian used to say that a bow at full draw was 90% broken. 48" is awfully short for a self bow, and the 10% margin of error is probably less at that length...

[Pat B]

That is not a compression failure from the way it looks to me. It looks like a violated grain(or belly grain) gave way under tension.  I have replaced a few bows for folks that swore they didn't string it backwards but if you build enough bows and destroy as many as I have over many years you get to know how wood reacts to stress. I save many of my failures so I have a reference to study when things go bad.     Pat